This image is a combination of two projects we’re working on: 1) setting up our new (to us) vintage aluminum tree and 2) having fun with the eye hole lens we’re installing on our studio door. Hope your holidays are warm and filled with Hitchcockian perspective.

We were blogging here when Kerry was running for president, and now, four years later, we too, are in need of a new direction. This blog is due for some reinvention, some fresh air, a new vision. Murray and I are still figuring out what that will look like, but change: it’s coming.

Ever have one of those months? We’re still recovering from August. Since we were traveling for 6 weeks, we passed all of our problems, headaches and hurdles—and they’ve been catching up with us now that we’ve stopped moving.

We’ve moved into a new live work studio—and are loving it—but are contending with a leaky ceiling and getting organized. Every time I need something I have to look for awhile. On top of that we bought a $400 cargo van with some fellow artists that is needing a lot of attention to pass emissions.

But the real drama is our animals. The dog didn’t want to leave the bedroom for weeks and the adventurous cat found a way inside our walls (is that meow coming from the wall?), got hung up on something and is now in a Elizabethan collar.

That said, we’re considering a photo shoot this weekend at Cape Cod. Perhaps we should keep running and see if life just gets bored and quits.

For the last week we’ve traveled through Helsinki, Berlin and London to end up in Dallas to pick up our dog, who has been spending the summer with family. We drove from Dallas to our home in Providence and now are preparing to move into a new live/work space this month.

We’ve always wanted a single place to live and work but for one reason or another [read: money] this has never worked out. for the five years we lived in LA, affording sizable studio space was a frequent source of frustration that ultimately became a reason to leave.

One of the great things about Providence is the abundance of old factories that have been transformed into a wide range of live/work spaces ranging from luxury lofts with granite-counter-tops to spaces that artists can actually afford and have enough space to get things done.

As an aside, this is one of the two reasons why so many artists live in Providence (the other being proximity to Boston and NYC). I should add that RISD is a good anchor store.

Our studio has always been a short drive away from where we lived, which has the illusion of keeping our home life and work life separate. In reality, what our work ends up looking like is half office-work and half studio-work. Since our past studios have been so rough, the office-work, including files and printers and such, happened at home. We’ve never had a real separation of work and home. And don’t get me started on how being married to your collaborator magnifies this.

Our studio last year was 20 minutes away from our home/office. This was just enough to make us think twice about taking a trip, which ultimately means less time in the studio. On top of that, it was super cold in winter and too dirty to do paperwork. Our thinking now is that a live work space will take less time and money and be a more efficient place to do everything we need to do.

The place we’re moving into has two floors. We’ll live on the top floor and work on the bottom. Our idea is that we’ll make downstairs and breathe upstairs.

Art, money, living and working are terribly hard to balance. We’ll let you know what we find out.

Boston, New York City, Providence: these are three of the oldest and most historic cities in the United States. Each has been and is still home to a vast number of working artists and has had a front row seat for the first few hundred years of American art history. Considering the Monuments: Video Art from the East Coast looks at nine artists living in these cities. How do the artists who live and work in these cities contend with the weight of that history? How do artists living in these cities envision the future?

This diverse collection of videos, presented as a single-channel program of approximately 40 minutes, was curated by Megan and Murray McMillan, an artist-partnership collaborating in video, photography and installation. Based in Providence, Rhode Island, they are represented by Qbox Gallery in Athens, Greece and have exhibited nationally and internationally including at the National Museum of Art in La Paz, Bolivia, White Flag Projects in St. Louis, and Sound Art Space in Laredo, Texas. They are beneficiaries of several awards including grants from the Dallas Museum of Art and Purdue University, and recently participated in the 10th International Istanbul Biennial (2007) in Turkey.

The exhibition features recent video works by Pawel Wojtasik, Julia Hechtman, Timothy Hutchings, Joseph Tekippe, David Politzer, Brian Hutcheson, Rupert Nesbitt, Peter Owen, and Nade Haley. Whether exploring the new landscapes of public waste (Pawel Wojtasik’s Landfill), posing an apocalyptic entreaty (Julia Hechtman’s Before the Fall), merging iconic American tourist destinations with intimate storytelling (David Politzer’s Mt. Rushmore and Niagara Falls), or juxtaposing street-level images and GPS data to portray a walk around Manhattan (Joseph Tekippe’s 24 Hours Walking Manhattan: [Excerpt]), the artists represented in this exhibition consider the history and narrative of place and attempt to find their own place within it.

Back in January 2005, before we wrote almost exclusively about art-related things, Murray wrote a blog post he jokingly titled “The Myth of Fast Metabolism” in which he complained about how his usually fast metabolism had failed him by allowing him to gain 5 pounds over the holidays.

It’s a few dry-witted paragraphs that are about as far from sound dietetic advice as one could possibly get. He makes the entirely unscientific observation that “Unfortunately, fast metabolisms have a dark side: I gain weight just as fast as I lose it. ” He also confesses that he’s stopped exercising because he forgot to bring his exercise clothes on our trip.

This post, now well over three years old, is the number one reason people come visit our blog on Google searches. This post is currently listed third on a search for “fast metabolism,” under other legitimate health-related sites. At times over the years, it’s been first on the list.

Here’s the thing about this post: it still gets comments. All. The. Time. What started with people vehemently correcting Murray’s “analysis” of metabolism — “thats ridiculous, i have a super fast metabolism and do not gain weight.” and “Debora, i completely agree with you sister. Don’t ask that other dude [i.e., Murray] to add 1 + 1, he’ll probably say the answer is 3.” — has now become a place where people post their teary confessions about the struggles of living with high-speed body chemistry.

A normal person can go eating one meal a day. If I tried to do that I would be sick to my tummy crying in pain. If i [sic] go just a little to [sic] long with out eatting [sic] my body turns on my self and I swear starts to eat me.

i always had weight loss problem and in my case it is not good cause i am now a mum and sad to say im [sic] only 30 kg (66 lbs) and i cannot hold my child like the ordinary mums do…

my ribs and spine stick out, i have no chest, im [sic] too tall, square hips, all boney, no boyfriend… and people call me lucky.

Thank God I found this site. Now I dont [sic] feel so alone. People ask me if I’m bulimic and anorexic and I had to go through a family intervention!

Only one sly reader seems to get the irony:

Darn you Captain Matabo. You steer your ship of irony and wit into a sea of poor pathetic preachers drowning in their own myopic woe-is-me… Why must I lazily and rhetorically fall back into parallel structure. This is no soup opera. Why must I google you if you consume my life unless I just want to show you off. Oh it’s a showdown between Captain Metabo and Calamity Vanity, I’d steak my life on it. I’m sure of it.